Tidbits

Sleepover at Ikea - Maybe this is the only way to get to the $1 early enough…
A ramen bath - Japanese spa with special baths resembling instant noodles. I wanna play!
Old age homes for dogs - 1) Old dogs don’t like to be abandoned at strange places. 2) Playing with young puppies will probably cause the older dogs to die faster due to exhaustion.
A remote-controlled pigeon - Oh the poor thing…
An article on a brilliant method of teaching grade schoolers about bats and rabies. I smell a lawsuit.
Will trade beer for Crumpler bags. Tempted by the beanbag and messenger bags…

The Departed is such a copy of Infernal Affairs

January 30, 2007, 5:56 am

Just finished watching The Departed, and man, I don’t get it. How can a Hollywood movie that’s such a total copy of another movie get nominated for Best Picture of the Year. 2006 must have been a pretty sad year for movie making.

I have no problems with movies based on books, it’s a different medium and all. And it would have been fine if The Departed just took the basic plot of “mole in police, mole in the bad guys” and did something else with it. But no, everything it was practically an exact copy of Infernal Affairs, scene per scene, element per element. Sure, the setting was changed, and some characters were added or removed.

They even had the scene with the superior telling Damon’s character about the merits of marriage. First, when were they even engaged, much less have a wedding planned? Second, dude, Western culture don’t associate manhood and respect with marriage, Chinese culture does. So what’s this BS about getting married will let people know you are not a homo? It just does not work.

So maybe it was a mistake watching Infernal Affairs first, and like right before Departed. But I find the Chinese version superior to the cheap Western knockoff, because it was original and so the various plot elements in the story made sense. Casting those non-native chinese speakers as the other bad guys were the last straw. People who want to blow up Taiwan do not speak Cantonese! And if you are gonna so blatantly copy from the Chinese source, show some respect and get the protrayal right!

People who says The Departed was so much better than Infernal Affairs, I’m sorry, but you don’t know a movie from reading subtitles.

So no, I don’t think Departed was a good movie, because it made me feel insulted.